Jan Van den Bulcke

Tom De Mil

Dendrochronomics

Discipline

The study of wood formation at different temporal and spatial scales is, clearly, in need of techniques enabling
to capture sufficient multi-scale detail (Battipiglia et al. 2014). Both technological advances as well as related
computational techniques will help in increasing our understanding of tree response in a changing climate and changing needs,
supporting sustainable production of both timber and non-timber products.
The aim of dendrochronomics is to develop a high-throughput multi-scale hard- and software platform to obtain
and analyze continuous time series of multi-proxy data, with intra-annual resolution, on increment cores mainly.
The platform comprises 3 essential breakthrough steps: high-throughput acquisition of multi-proxy tree-ring series,
guided cross-dating and advanced time-aware analysis. The backbone of dendrochronomics is advanced multi-scale X-ray CT scanning
(see example below for an increment core of Quercus spp.) at one hand and full imaging of long microtome cross-sections
(see example below for Entandrophragma spp) at the other hand.

Database

Within dendrochronomics, we also aim at the development of a database, both containing pith-to-bark density profiles
based on 3D X-ray CT volumes as well as (partially annotated) pith-to-bark cross-sections.
Currently, more than 5000 cores from locations in Africa and Europe haven been X-ray CT scanned (see map below, which will be updated regularly).
Software and a test volume, used in the papers of Van den Bulcke et al. (2014) and De Mil et al. (2016) can be downloaded
here.
The toolboxes come without manual for the moment and are built with MATLAB R2017b (9.3). You need to install the proper
Matlab Runtime Version.

Following projects (number corresponds with 'projectnr' in the pop-up on the map)
and associated people contributed to the database:

Collaborate with us

If you are interested in applying dendrochronomics in your work
or you want to know more about X-ray CT scanning for tree-ring analysis or the database,
feel free to contact us for collaboration. You can find additional information on the
UGent-Woodlab website.